Journalist Michael Hastings dies in car crash at 33

Michael Hastings, the award-winning journalist whose explosive 2010 Rolling Stone profile of U.S. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal (“The Runaway General“) led to McChrystal’s resignation, died Tuesday in an early morning car accident in Los Angeles, the magazine said. He was 33.

“Hard-charging, unabashedly opinionated, Hastings was original and at times abrasive,” Rolling Stone, where he was a contributing editor, said in an obituary. “He had little patience for flacks and spinmeisters and will be remembered for his enthusiastic breaches of the conventions of access journalism.”

“We are shocked and devastated by the news that Michael Hastings is gone,” Buzzfeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith said in a statement. “Michael was a great, fearless journalist with an incredible instinct for the story, and a gift for finding ways to make his readers care about anything he covered from wars to politicians. He wrote stories that would otherwise have gone unwritten, and without him there are great stories that will go untold. Michael was also a wonderful, generous colleague and a joy to work with and a lover of corgis—especially his Bobby Sneakers.”

The Los Angeles Police Department would not release the name of a male driver killed in one-car crash at approximately 4:25 a.m. in Hollywood. According to the Los Angeles Times, the vehicle crossed the median, slammed into a tree and burst into flames; the driver was pronounced dead at the scene. According to KTLA, coroner’s officials said the body was too badly burned to make an immediate identification. Video purportedly taken from the scene—posted on LAWeekly.com—shows a vehicle engulfed in flames.

“Great reporters exude a certain kind of electricity,” Rolling Stone managing editor Will Dana said in a statement. “The sense that there are stories burning inside them, and that there’s no higher calling or greater way to live life than to be always relentlessly trying to find and tell those stories. I’m sad that I’ll never get to publish all the great stories that he was going to write, and sad that he won’t be stopping by my office for any more short visits which would stretch for two or three completely engrossing hours.”

“Part of his passion stemmed from a desire to make everyone else wake the fuck up and realize the value of the life we’re living,” Matt Farwell, Hastings friend and fellow war reporter, wrote.

Hastings’ “hallmark as a reporter was his refusal to cozy up to power,” the magazine said, pointing to an email exchange he had last fall with Hillary Clinton aide Philippe Reines in the aftermath of the Benghazi attacks:

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Breitbart editor: We won’t pursue eligibility

‘To my knowledge, there’s no evidence. I just don’t believe it’

Published: 3 hours ago

A new editor for Breitbart.com, reorganized quickly after the sudden death March 1 of founder and conservative activist Andrew Breitbart, says the issue of Barack Obama’s eligibility simply doesn’t matter.

“To my knowledge, there’s no evidence. I just don’t believe it,” Ben Shapiro, newly named editor-at-large for Breitbart.com, told Mark Gillar during an interview on his BlogTalkRadio program.

It was Breitbart who told the Conservative Political Action Conference shortly before his sudden death that he had obtained videos and other information about Obama’s past. Breitbart said he intended to vet the incumbent president before the 2012 election, because the media didn’t do it in 2008.

His organization, which had been on the Internet under the Big Government, Big Hollywood and other names, was in a reorganization at the time Breitbart died, and the new consolidated Breitbart.com site was released only days later.

Shapiro, author of the bestselling “Brainwashed” as well as “Primetime Propaganda,” was named editor-at-large as responsibilities were reassigned. Breitbart.com also announced Stephen K. Bannon was named executive chairman and Laurence G. Solov president.

Joel B. Pollak was appointed editor-in-chief, and Alex Marlow was named managing editor.

“Our goal in 2012 is to continue Andrew’s project, ‘The Vetting,’ which examines the president, his rivals and the mainstream media,” Pollak said in the company’s announcement. “In this crucial election year and beyond, we will continue to drive the national debate by promoting the ‘citizen journalism’ that was Andrew’s unique vision and his enduring legacy to American media.”

Gillar asked Shapiro about the vetting process, and Shapiro asked that people with tips contact his organization.

But when Gillar asked about evidence suggesting Obama is ineligible to even hold the office of president, Shapiro rejected the suggestions outright:

The interview:

“We need an army of citizen journalists,” Shapiro explained. “The media is not going to do its jobs. The media is simply going to continue its pattern of protecting President Obama. If you have a tip send it to us.”

On the eligibility issue, however, Shapiro said, “I’m one of the people who yawns at it.”

“I know there are people who are very concerned with this,” he said. “I think it’s a waste of resources. No. 1, I don’t think it’s true. No. 2, even if it were true, it would have not impact on the political debate, because nobody can do anything about it.”

“It’s a waste of resources, and it’s a waste of time,” he said. “It makes people look like kooks even if they aren’t.”

He continued, “I would really recommend people drop this topic and focus on who this president is, as opposed to an issue that is not going to be an issue in this election.”

He said other people were free to investigate and report, but that he wasn’t going to do it: “All I’m recommending is if you’re really concerned with Obama being ousted from the Oval Office, we should focus … on who he is and what he’s done.”

He said “as a journalist,” he had looked at “the arguments on both sides.”

“I keep saying this over and over, because I know Media Matters is going to listen to this. I don’t think it’s true,” he said, referencing a far-left leaning website that ridicules those who report on the Obama eligibility issue.

Gillar volunteered to provide Shapiro with information concerning Obama, including some that doesn’t even approach the volcanic dispute over whether Obama is a “natural-born citizen” as the Constitution requires of presidents.

He cited evidence that Obama’s Selective Service registration was forged, a registration that is required for elected office in the U.S.

However, in numerous polls, fully half of Americans have said they don’t believe Oba

ma’s birth narrative and either don’t believe or distrust the idea that he’s eligible to be president.

A recent poll done for WND by Wenzel Strategies revealed that almost 40 percent of registered voters now think the nation is facing a constitutional crisis because of a lack of documentation regarding Obama’s eligibility.

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Charles J. Ogletree (born December 31, 1952 in Merced, California) is Jesse Climenko Professor at Harvard Law School, the founder of the school’s Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice, and the author of numerous books on legal topics.

Ogletree taught both Barack and Michelle Obama at Harvard; he has remained close to Barack Obama throughout his political career.[5] He appeared briefly on the joint Daily Show-Colbert Report election night coverage of the 2008 presidential election, making a few remarks about his personal knowledge of the Obamas.

Ogletree has written opinion pieces on the state of race in the United States for major publications.[6] Ogletree also served as the moderator for a panel discussion on civil rights in baseball on March 28, 2008 that accompanied the second annual Major League Baseball civil rights exhibition game the following day between the New York Mets and the Chicago White Sox.[7]

On July 21, 2009, Ogletree issued a statement in response to the arrest of his Harvard colleague and client, Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., whose arrest at his own home became a major news story about the nexus of politics, police power, and race that summer.[8] Professor Ogletree later wrote a book about the events entitled The Presumption of Guilt: The Arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Race, Class and Crime in America.

After the September 2009 death of Senator Ted Kennedy, Ogletree’s name was suggested as one of the possible appointees to Kennedy’s seat as a “placeholder” until a special election could be held. Other names rumored to be in contention were Michael Dukakis and several people who had held important Massachusetts or national Democratic positions: Paul G. Kirk (a former chair of the Democratic National Committee), Nick Littlefield (a former Kennedy chief of staff), Robert Travaglini, and Shannon O’Brien.[9]

In 2004 Harvard disciplined Ogletree for the plagiarism of six paragraphs from Yale scholar Jack Balkin’s book, What Brown v. Board of Education Should Have Said in his own book, All Deliberate Speed: Reflections on the First Half-Century of Brown v. Board of Education.[10] Ogletree apologized, saying that he “made a serious mistake during the editorial process of completing this book, and delegated too much responsibility to others during the final editing process.” Former Harvard President Derek C. Bok concluded, “There was no deliberate wrongdoing at all…. He marshaled his assistants and parceled out the work and in the process some quotation marks got lost.”[11][12]
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“The Space Traders” (1992) is a short story written by Derrick Bell, science fiction fan and professor of constitutional law. It is a thought experiment: what if space traders came from another star and offered to buy all the black people in America?

It is set in America in the near future:

The government is nearly broke.
The oil and coal are almost gone.
The air is unfit to breathe by the old and sick – they have to wear masks.
Civil rights laws have been overturned.
Most blacks are poor, walled off in ghettos under armed guard.

The Space Traders arrive, offering:

Enough gold to settle America’s debts and make it a rich country again.
Machines that can produce cheap, clean power.
Chemicals to clean the air.

In exchange for:

All the black people in America.

They will not say why they want them. They give the president 16 days to make a decision – till Martin Luther King Day. They give proof they can make good on the deal.

Most whites see the trade as an amazing piece of luck: not only would the country become rich and liveable again but race would no longer be an issue!

Blacks are solidly against the deal. They do not trust the Space Traders one bit. Whites brush off their concerns.

Blacks start escaping the country, but then the borders are closed on instructions from the Space Traders.

The country is to vote on an amendment to the constitution to allow the Trade.

For the Trade:

Most white voters – who have long seen blacks as a drain on the country and the main cause of crime. Blacks should prove their patriotism and do what is best for the country!
The president and Congress – who need the white vote.
Television preachers – who, knowing how racist their mainly white working-class audience is, milk it for all it is worth.
The Supreme Court – who compare it to the Japanese American internment and forced military service.

Against:

All blacks – even the Uncle Tom who is the main character
White liberals
Jews – who compare it to Hitler’s Final Solution, but deep down know that without blacks they would become America’s next scapegoat.
Big business – who would lose 12% of their customers while certain industries, like oil, would be destroyed by the Trade. But mainly because without blacks the white masses would wake up and see who their true enemies are.

Big business controls the media, but as a television network head points out:

We simply can’t change this country’s view about the superiority of whites and the inferiority of blacks in a week. I doubt you could do it in a decade.

They try their best – but fail: 70% of Americans vote for the Trade.

And so on the last Martin Luther King Day in America, blacks are marched onto the ships of the Space Traders in chains, half-naked, while white men with guns look on, allowing no chance of escape.
————————————————————–

Now on to the video.
On the “full” Breitbart video it shows Obama speaking at a Harvard protest and praising Prof. Derrick Bell, hugging him and telling the crowd to open their minds and open their hearts to what the Prof. has to say.

Further on the video it shows Charles Ogletree announcing before an audience that “we hid the tape during the 2008 election”, “it doesn’t matter who finds it (the video) now”.

WBGH refused to show the whole video and heavily edited it so Obama wouldn’t look bad.

Ben Smith appeared on Andrea Mitchell Reports Wednesday to discuss a video posted on BuzzFeed from a Boston television station, which featured a young Barack Obama at “a 1991 campus protest in support of Harvard’s first tenured black law professor, Derrick Bell and to ‘demand tenure for minority and female law professors.’”

RELATED: Breitbart.com Editor To Release Full ‘Obama College Video’ On Hannity Tonight

“This is remarkable footage, we saw a snippet,” Mitchell said. “We were chatting off camera about it in one of the documentaries about Barack Obama, I have never seen all of that. We know Professor Derrick Bell’s fight for diversity on the faculty of Harvard Law. And this is classic Obama.”

“It’s kind of an amazing, interesting moment because he looks so young but he sounds exactly the same. It’s a really interesting moment in his career, he’d always try to take this conciliatory middle ground, particularly around issues of race. This was a moment he couldn’t there was an intense, divisive moment at Harvard where Derrick Bell was threatening to quit if they did not increase divserity in hiring and everyone had to choose to side and he ultimately chose to side with Bell and he gave this very classic Obama speech.”

“And what’s classic about it is it’s race and gender!” Mitchell exclaimed. “It’s the very issues we are talking about today, it’s issues of gender that have certainly taken hold in the republican campaign and we have heard what the president said when he called Sandra Fluke and spoke out about it at his press conference.”

“It gives you a sense of how adept he is at navigating these issues in public and how look he’s been doing it — and how much practice he’s has,” Smith noted.

“And the consistency of it and this is not some firebrand radical at all in the context of the times,” Mitchell observed. “He was the head of the law review and speaking out on behalf of a very distinguished professor.”

“And also taking a side, and taking the left side but doing it in a way that feels very conciliatory,” Smith concluded.

Not discussed was Breitbart.com’s contention that the video in question has been selectively edited.

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The first images from a stash that the late Andrew Breitbart promised to use to “vet” Barack Obama during the 2012 presidential race appeared today.

Ben Smith of Buzzfeed announced on Twitter that the film was released by video researcher Andrew Kaczynski, but Breitbart’s Big Government.com site immediately noted that it has been “edited” and that more video would be coming within hours.

On the video, Obama is speaking to a rally on behalf of a professor.

He praises the teacher: “The black law students organized an orientation … one of the persons who spoke was Professor Bell. …. I remember him sauntering up to the front and not giving us a lecture but engaging us in a conversation,” Obama says.

According to Joel Pollak’s report at Breitbart.com, “The video, which Kaczynski says was ‘licensed from a Boston television station,’ shows a young Barack Obama leading a protest at Harvard Law School on behalf of Prof. Derrick Bell, a radical academic tied to Jeremiah Wright – about whom we will be releasing significant information in the coming hours.”

He reported that the video was “selectively edited – either by the Boston television station or by Buzzfeed itself.”

He promised that Breitbart.com will release “additional footage that has been hidden by Obama’s allies in the mainstream media and academia.”

The report also said Pollak and Ben Shapiro will appear on the Fox News Channel’s “Hannity” show tonight to talk about the tape.

WND reported earlier that Breitbart had been investigating Obama just before his sudden death.

He told a crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington that he had obtained videos of Obama from the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee’s college days.

“I’ve got videos, by the way. This election we’re going to vet him. I’ve got videos – this election we’re going to vet him – from his college days to show you why … racial division and class warfare are central to what hope and change was sold in 2008,” Breitbart told CPAC.

He said the videos will reveal Obama during a time when he was meeting a “bunch of silver ponytails” – referring to Weather Underground terror group members Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

It was in the couple’s Chicago home that Obama’s political career reportedly was launched, and his ties to the two run deep. There’s been a solid argument made that Ayers ghost-wrote Obama’s highly acclaimed memoir, “Dreams from My Father.”

The possibility of videos producing revelations about Obama’s college days is significant, as Obama has carefully kept concealed evidence about his life during the time he reportedly attended Occidental College in California and later two East Coast schools.

A lawsuit at one point obtained an order for Occidental to reveal Obama’s student records. The aim was to find out whether he obtained aid or assistance as a foreign student, lending credibility to the argument that he does not qualify to be president under the Constitution’s “natural-born citizen” requirement.

The video posted by Buzzfeed:

Interest in the issue of Obama’s eligibility skyrocketed recently when an investigative team commission by Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Ariz., said there is probable cause that the document released by the White House last year as President Obama’s birth certificate is a computer-generated forgery.

At a news conference, lead investigator Mike Zullo said his team believes the Hawaii Department of Health has engaged in a systematic effort to hide from public inspection any original 1961 birth records it may have in its possession.

“Officers of the Hawaii Department of Health and various elected Hawaiian public officials may have intentionally obscured 1961 birth records and procedures to avoid having to release to public inspection and to the examination of court-authorized forensic examiners any original Obama 1961 birth records the Hawaii Department of Health may or may not have,” Zullo said.

BARBARA OLSON – Author of “Hell to Pay” – a book critical of Hillary Clinton, killed in the Pentagon bombing.

DARLENE NOVINGER – Former FBI operative, January 23rd, 2003. Novinger was known to hold sensitive information on the Clinton and Bush I administration’s drug operations. Her husband murdered March 1987 when she went public with initial reports. Her father died July 8, 1993 four hours after Darlene was a guest on the Tom Valentine show. Suffered retaliation after reporting discussions by government protected drug smuggler who described contacts with Vice President George Bush and his son, Jeb Bush.

DAN MULLONEY, a television news photographer who shot footage of the 1993 Branch Davidian siege.

CHARLES RUFF – White House Counsel and Clinton defense attorney during the Monica Lewinsky scandal and the impeachment trial. Of apparent natural causes.

JAMES MCDOUGAL – Clinton’s convicted Whitewater partner died of an apparent heart attack, while in solitary confinement. McDougal was a key witness in Kenneth Starr’s investigation.

MARY MAHONEY – A former White House intern was murdered July 6, 1997 at a Starbucks Coffee Shop in Georgetown. The murder happened during the pre-trial publicity surrounding the Paula Jones lawsuit days after Newsweek’s Mike Isakoff dropped hints that a former White House staffer was about to go public with her story of sexual harassment in the White House.

VINCENT FOSTER – Former White House counselor, and former colleague of Hillary Clinton at Little Rock’s Rose law firm. Foster was found dead July 20, 1993 of a gunshot to the head ruled a suicide. Rumours were that Foster and Hillary had an affair.

RON BROWN – Secretary of Commerce and former DNC Chairman. Reported to have died by impact in a plane crash. A pathologist close to the investigation reported to the Bob Grant Radio Show a hole in top of Brown’s skull resembling a gunshot wound. At the time of his death Brown was being investigated, and spoke publicly of his willingness to cut a deal with prosecutors.

C. VICTOR RAISER II – Former National finance Co-Chairman, Clinton for President Campaign and son MONTGOMERY RAISER died in a private plane crash in Alaska, July 30th,1992. Raiser was described as a major player in the Clinton organization by Dee Dee Meyers.

JEREMY “MIKE” BOORDA, President Clinton’s former Chief of Naval Operations allegedly committed suicide by shooting himself in the chest with a .38 caliber pistol on his front lawn in May 1996. The unauthorized wearing of valor pins was the alleged reasoning behind the suicide. By 1998 this reasoning was proved false after the Navy issued a report that said Boorda earned the right to wear the pins afterall.

PAUL TULLEY – Democrat National Committee Political Director found dead in a hotel room in Little Rock, Arkansas September 24, 1992, Described by Clinton as a “Dear friend and trusted advisor”.

ED WILLEY – Clinton fund raiser-found dead November 30, 1993 deep in the woods in Virginia of a gunshot wound to the head. Ruled a suicide, Willey died on the same day his wife Kathleen Willey claimed that Bill Clinton groped her in the oval office in the White House. Ed Willey was involved in several Clinton fund raising events.

JERRY PARKS – Head of Clinton’s gubernatorial security team in Little Rock. Gunned down in his car at a deserted intersection outside Little Rock. Parks’ son said his father was building a dossier on Clinton. He allegedly threatened to reveal this information. After he died the files were mysteriously removed from his house

JAMES BUNCH – Died from a gunshot wound. Reported to have a black book of people containing names of influential people who visited prostitutes in Texas and Arkansas.

JAMES WILSON – Was found dead by hanging May 18, 1993. Was reported to have ties to Whitewater.

KATHY FERGUSON – Ex-wife of Arkansas Trooper Danny Ferguson died in May,1994 was found dead in her living room with a gunshot wound to her head. It was ruled a suicide even though there were several packed suitcases, as if she was going somewhere. Danny Ferguson was a co-defendant along with Bill Clinton in the Paula Corbin Jones lawsuit. She was reported a possible corroborating witness for Paula Jones case.

BILL SHELTON – Arkansas state Trooper and Fiancee of Kathy Ferguson.Critical of the suicide ruling of his fiancee, he was found dead in June, 1994 of a gunshot wound also ruled a suicide at the grave site of his fiancee.

GANDY BAUGH – Attorney for Clinton friend Dan Lassater died by falling out a window of a tall building January, 1991. His client was a convicted drug distributor.

SUZANNE COLEMAN – Reportedly had an affair with Clinton when he was Arkansas Attorney General. Died of a gunshot wound to back of head, ruled a suicide, was pregnant at the time her death.

PAULA GROBER – Clinton’s speech interpreter for the deaf from 1978 until her death December 9, 1992. She died in a one car accident.

DANNY CASOLARO – Investigative reporter, investigating Mena airport and Arkansas Development Finance Authority. Found dead with slit his wrists in the middle of his investigation.

PAUL WILCHER – Attorney investigating corruption at Mena Airport with Casolaro and the 1980 “October Surprise” was found dead on a toilet June 22, 1993 in his Washington DC Apartment. Had delivered report to Janet Reno 3 weeks before his death.

BARBARA WISE – Commerce Department Staffer, worked closely with Ron Brown and John Huang. Cause of death unknown. Died November 29, 1996. Her bruised nude body was found locked in her office at the Department of Commerce.

CHARLES MEISSNER – Assistant Secretary of Commerce who gave John Huang special security clearance, died shortly thereafter in a small plane crash.

HERSHELL FRIDAY – Attorney and Clinton fund raiser died March 1, 1994 when his plane exploded.

KEVIN IVES and DON HENRY – Known as “The boys on the track” case. Reports say the boys may have stumbled upon the Mena Arkansas Airport Drug operation. This controversial case where initial report of death was due to falling asleep on railroad track. Later reports claim the two had been slain before being placed on the tracks. Many people linked to the case died (see below) before their testimony could come before a Grand Jury.

THE FOLLOWING SIX PERSONS HAD INFORMATION ON THE IVES/HENRY CASE:

KEITH CONEY – Died when his motorcycle slammed into the back of a truck in July, 1988.
KEITH McMASKLE – Died, stabbed 113 times, November 1988.
GREGORY COLLINS – Died from a gunshot wound, January 1989.
JEFF RHODES – He was shot, mutilated and found burned in a trash dump in April 1989.
JAMES MILAN. Found decapitated-Coroner ruled death due to natural causes.
JORDAN KETTLESON – Was found shot to death in the front seat of his pickup truck in June 1990.
RICHARD WINTERS – Winters was a suspect in the Ives/Henry deaths. Was killed in set-up robbery in July 1989.

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I enjoy a good conspiracy theory as well as the next guy, in fact, have started a few myself, but I don’t think it’s here this time. When I watched his CPAC video it suggested to me that he was going to release the videos around election time.

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Friday, March 2, 2012

In a stunning coincidence, It appears Andrew Breitbart suffered his untimely death just hours before he was set to release damning video footage that could have sunk Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign.

Around three weeks ago on February 9 during the ‘Blog Bash’ event in Washington DC, Breitbart made a prophetic comment that takes on a somewhat chilling nature given the fact that he died in the early hours of March 1st.

Speaking to Lawrence Sinclair of Sinclair News, Breitbart stated, “Wait til they see what happens March 1st.”

It’s almost certain that Breitbart was referring to his plan to release damning footage of President Obama that he had been promising to reveal throughout the month of February.

As we reported yesterday, Breitbart spoke of his intention to release the tape during his CPAC speech last month. The footage shows Obama in his college days appearing alongside former Weather Underground terrorists Bill and Bernardine Dohrn. Observers had speculated that the footage could have derailed Obama’s hopes for a second term.

“I’ve got video from his college days that show you why racial division and class warfare are central to what hope and change was sold in 2008 – the videos are going to come out,” said Breitbart, adding that Obama would be vetted.

You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to appreciate the downright weirdness of Breitbart predicting a major event to occur on March 1st, only for him to end up dying on that very date. Breitbart was officially pronounced dead at 12:19am.

Although the cause of Breitbart’s death was hastily reported to be of “natural causes,” the Los Angeles County coroner’s office have refused to confirm anything until an autopsy has been performed.

According to marketing executive Arthur Sando, Breitbart spent his final hour in a bar near his home called the Brentwood sipping red wine and talking politics. After leaving the bar at around 11:30pm, Breitbart began to walk home before apparently suffering a fatal heart attack.

Although it is reported that Breitbart was rushed to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, when Lawrence Sinclair called the hospital, they denied that anyone by that name had been admitted within the previous 72 hours.

Watch the CPAC video below where Breitbart mentions the Obama footage he had seemingly planned to release just hours before his death.

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“President Barack Obama’s long-form birth certificate released by the White House on April 27, 2011, is suspected to be a computer-generated forgery, not a scan of an original 1961 paper document as represented by the White House when the long-form birth certificate was made public,” Arizona’s Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio said at a press conference today in Phoenix.

This is the major preliminary finding of a six-month ongoing Sheriff’s Cold Case Posse law enforcement investigation into the authenticity of Obama’s birth certificate and his eligibility to be president.

Having developed probable cause to believe the long-form birth certificate was most likely a computer-generated forgery, investigators began examining other evidence of President Obama’s life history.

• President Obama’s Selective Service card was most likely a forgery, revealed by an examination of the postal date stamp on the document;

• Records of Immigration and Naturalization Service cards filled out by airplane passengers arriving on international flights originating outside the United States in the month of August 1961, examined at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., are missing records for the week of President Obama’s birth, including the dates Aug. 1, 1961 through Aug. 7, 1961.

Beginning in October 2011, the Sheriff’s Cold Case Posse, consisting of former law enforcement officers and lawyers with law enforcement experience, examined dozens of witnesses and hundreds of documents, as well as taking numerous sworn statements from witnesses around the world.

In August 2011, 250 members of the Surprise, Arizona, Tea Party, residents of Maricopa County, presented a signed petition asking Sheriff Arpaio to undertake the investigation.

The Tea Party members petitioned under the premise that if a forged birth certificate was utilized to obtain a position for Barack Obama on the 2012 Arizona presidential ballot, their rights as Maricopa County voters could be compromised.

The Cold Case investigators further determined that the Hawaii Department of Health has engaged in what Sheriff’s investigators believe is a systematic effort to hide from public inspection whatever original 1961 birth records the Hawaii Department of Health may have in their possession.

“Officers of the Hawaii Department of Health and various elected Hawaiian public officials may have intentionally obscured 1961 birth records and procedures, to avoid having to release to public inspection and to the examination of court-authorized forensic examiners any original Obama 1961 birth records the Hawaii Department of Health may or may not have,” said Mike Zullo, the lead investigator in Sheriff Arpaio’s Cold Case Posse.

The Cold Case investigators have not yet determined who, when, or precisely how the long-form computer-generated birth certificate released on April 27 may have been forged, but investigators say the evidence contained in the computer-generated PDF file released by the White House as well as important deficiencies in the Hawaii process of certifying the long-form birth certificate establish probable cause that a forgery has been committed.

The Cold Case Posse investigators advised Sheriff Arpaio that the forgers most likely committed two crimes: first, in fraudulently creating a forgery that the White House characterized, knowingly or unknowingly, as an officially produced governmental birth record; and second, in fraudulently presenting to the residents of Maricopa County and to the American public at large a forgery the White House represented as “proof positive” of President Obama’s authentic 1961 Hawaii long-form birth certificate.

“A continuing investigation is needed to identify the identity of the person or persons involved in creating the alleged birth certificate forgery, and to determine who, if anyone, in the White House or the state of Hawaii may have authorized the forgery,” Arpaio said.

Among the evidence released at the press conference were five videos the Cold Case Posse produced to demonstrate why the Obama long-form birth certificate is suspected to be a computer-generated forgery.

The videos consisted of step-by-step computer demonstrations using a control document.

The videos were designed to display the testing used by the investigators to examine various claims made by supporters of the April 27 document.

The videos illustrate point-by-point the investigators’ conclusion that the features and anomalies observed on the Obama long-form birth certificate were inconsistent with features produced when a paper document is scanned, even if the scan of the paper document had been enhanced by Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and optimized.

Additionally, the videos demonstrated that the Hawaii Department of Health Registrar’s name stamp and the Registrar’s date stamp were computer-generated images imported into an electronic document, as opposed to actual rubber stamp imprints inked by hand or machine onto a paper document.

“That we were able to cast reasonable suspicions on the authenticity of the Registrar stamps was especially disturbing, since these stamp imprints are designed to provide government authentication to the document itself,” Zullo said, stressing that if the Registrar stamps are forgeries, the document itself is likely a forgery.

The investigators also chronicled a series of inconsistent and misleading representations that various Hawaii government officials have made over the past five years regarding what, if any, original birth records are held by the Hawaii Department of Health.

“As I said at the beginning of the investigation,” Arpaio said, “the president can put all this to rest quite easily. All he has to do is demand the Hawaii Department of Health release to the American public and to a panel of certified court-authorized forensic examiners all original 1961 paper, microfilm, and computer birth records the Hawaii Department of Health has in its possession.”

Arpaio further stressed the Hawaii Department of Health needs to provide, as part of the full disclosure, evidence regarding the chain of custody of all Obama birth records, including paper, microfilm, and electronic records, in order to eliminate the possibility that a forger or forgers may have tampered with the birth records.

Arpaio went on to say the President should also authorize Kapiolani Hospital, the birth hospital listed on the Obama long-form birth certificate, to release any and all hospital patient records for Stanley Ann Dunham Obama, his mother, and for the newly born Barack Obama, in order to provide additional corroboration for the original 1961 birth records held in the Hawaii Department of Health vault.

“Absent the authentic Hawaii Department of Health 1961 birth records for Barack Obama, there is no other credible proof supporting the idea or belief that President Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, as he and the White House have consistently asserted,” Zullo said.

“In fact, absent the authentication of Hawaii Department of Health 1961 birth records for Barack Obama, there is no other proof he was born anywhere within the United States.”

Arpaio concluded the press conference by suggesting a congressional investigation might be warranted and asked that any other law enforcement agency with information referencing this investigation be forwarded to his office.